Beijing has not confirmed any details of the recent reports, but the desert is known to have hosted military tests in the past.

This includes full-scale mock-ups of an American Ford-class aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that were spotted three years ago by space technology company Maxar.

A decade ago, satellite images also confirmed that China had constructed a building closely resembling Taiwan’s presidential office along with a street grid with similarities to the capital Taipei.

Chinese state media later broadcast People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops practising an assault on the building, which was constructed at the Zhurihe combat training base in Inner Mongolia.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own territory even though it has never governed there and the democratic island functions like any other nation with its own government, military and currency.

‘Decisive enabler’

US forces and their allies have also trained in strategies to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, as they focus on countering Beijing’s expanding influence and military footprint in the Indo-Pacific region.

The US Special Operations Command staged its first-ever Taiwan conflict scenario in Fort Bragg, also known as Fort Liberty, last year.

As China deepens its strategic ties with Russia, military tensions spilled over into a war of words between Beijing and Nato this week, after the Western security alliance warned China to stop being a “decisive enabler” of the Kremlin’s war machine against Ukraine.

As Nato’s 32 leaders wrapped up a Washington summit this week, to which Volodymyr Zelensky was invited, the organisation posted on its X account, formerly Twitter, that it would deepen ties with South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia “to stand up to authoritarianism and the growing alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea”.